[michaelrpeskin]

A little snarky but: In my experience, the folks who are 100x more productive are multiplying 100 times a small number.

I've found great success with LLMs in the research phase of coding. Last week I needed to write some domain-specific linear algebra and because of some other restrictions, I couldn't just pull in LAPACK. So I had to hand code the work (yes, I know you shouldn't hand code this kind of stuff, but it was a small slice and the domain didn't require the fully-optimized LAPACK stuff). I used an LLM to do the research part that I normally would have had to resort to a couple of math texts to fully understand. So in that case it did make me 100x more effective because it found what I needed and summarized it so that I could convert it to code really quickly.

For the fun of it, I did ask the LLM to generate the code for me too, and it made very subtle mistakes that wouldn't have been obvious unless you were already an expert in the field. I could see how a junior engineer would have been impressed by it and probably just check it in and go on.

I'm still a firm believer in understanding every bit of code you check in, so even if LLMs get really good, the "code writing" part of my work probably won't ever get faster. But for figuring out what code to write - I think LLMs will make people much faster. The research and summarize part is amazing.

The real value in the world is synthesis and novel ideas. And maybe I'm a luddite, but I still think that takes human creativity. LLMs will be a critical support structure, but I'm not sold on them actually writing high-value code.

[ryandrake]

To steal the joke from that vintage coffee tin: LLMs help you "do stupid things faster." If all you want to do is dump terrible code into the world as fast as possible, then you've got a great tool there. If you're looking to slowly and carefully build a quality product on a solid foundation, or create a programming work of art, LLMs are at best a marginally better autocomplete.

[data-ottawa]

They definitely help raise the floor, but have a much lower ceiling.

If you’re near that ceiling you get most value out of code reviews and those side features you don’t care about that allow you to focus more on the actual problem.

That’s a 10-20% lift instead of 10/100x.

[Brystephor]

> I've found great success with LLMs in the research phase of coding.

This is what I've found it most helpful for. Typically I want an example specific to my scenario and use an LLM to generate the scenario that I ask questions about. It helps me go from understanding a process at a high level, to learning more about what components are involved at a lower level which let's me then go do more research on those components elsewhere.